The rhetorical perspective is one method of varying ad structure, which, particularly in the context of traditional goods, has received a substantial amount of attention since the early
‘90s (e.g. McQuarrie& Mick 1992, 1996, 1999, 2003, 2005; Tom & Eves 1999; Toncar and Munch 2001; Gkiouzepas & Hogg, 2011). In line with other framing strategies, rhetorics refer to the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’ in terms of message expression. Rhetorics consist of the manner in which content is expressed and the design used to persuade audiences (Phillips
120
and McQuarrie 2002). A rhetorical figure is defined as an artful deviation (Corbett 1990). In order for an expression to be classified as rhetorical, it must deviate from audience expectation but not be rejected as nonsensical, it should occur at the level of style rather than content, and it should conform to a template that is stable across different information content (McQuarrie and Mick 1996). Rhetorical figures can be contrasted to non-figurative statements, which are literal meanings expressed in expected or typical patterns (Huhmann 2008). When statements which could be traditionally classified as rhetorical figures, e.g. less figurative metaphors, are used commonly in everyday speech, they no longer deviate from expectation or violate norms. Therefore, it is useful to follow McQuarrie and Mick’s definition of rhetorics as deviating relative to audience expectation in order to avoid issues related to the definition of violation of norms or conventions in style. Prior research within the realm of rhetorics illustrates that it pays to frame information with rhetorical figures. In contrast with non-rhetorical ads, those using rhetorics are argued to lead to greater attention (Berlyne 1971), positive attitudes and recall (McQuarrie and Mick 1996), longer retention (Tom and Eves 1999, Toncar and Munch 2001, McQuarrie and Mick 2003), greater persuasion (Tom and Eves 1999), are seen as offering greater reward for individuals with a higher need for cognition (Peracchio and Meyers-Malaviya 1994), contribute to the formation of brand images (King 1989), and create pleasure (Bowers and Osborn 1966, Tanaka 1994).
Rhetorics also act to the benefit of persuasion in that they reduce counterarguments and source derogations (Sopory and Dillard 2002).
McQuarrie and Mick’s (1996) typology of rhetorical figures classifies figures according to the level of complexity and deviation, and distinguishes simple figures from more complex ones, positing an underlying distinction in how they impact information processing and persuasion. More complex figures require more elaboration and cognitive effort in order to understand the meaning as intended by the communicator, which can lead to greater persuasion. Because viewers are compensated for the extra cognitive effort devoted to processing in terms of pleasure (Barthes, 1985), complex rhetorical figures are more appreciated than simple ones, and can have a more powerful effect on persuasion. McQuarrie and Mick’s three level classification first distinguishes between two figurative modes, schemes and tropes. These modes are argued to fall at different points in terms of the deviation gradient, with schemes being less marked with deviation than tropes. Tropes are therefore expected to lead to greater viewer elaboration than schemes. Semantically, schemes are overcoded and tropes are undercoded. Undercoding, or excessive irregularity, is argued to
121
mark the text to a greater extent than overcoding (Eco 1979). Tropes are therefore incomplete, and it falls to the viewer to fill in the gap and interpret the strong and weak implicatures facilitated by the rhetorical figure (McQuarrie and Mick 2005). Schemes are characterized by overcoding and excessive regularity, in that they present the viewer with redundant cues that directly illustrate the intended interpretations. The excessive regularity inherent in schemes originates from sensory elements (e.g. the replication of syllables in rhyme), and the excessive irregularity inherent in tropes is a result of semantic elements (e.g.
the wordplay supported by a relevant pictorial in resonance) (McQuarrie, Edward and Mick 1999). Empirical evidence provides support for the notion that sensory and semantic elements incur different levels in terms of processing depth, with semantic elements requiring deeper processing than sensory elements (Childers and Houston 1984).The second level of McQuarrie and Mick’s typology outlines four groups of rhetorical operations, two schematic operations (repetition and reversal) and two tropic operations (substitution and destabilization). All of the figures in each of the four groups are characterized by a shared deviation gradient. A progressive order in terms of processing resources demanded has been established, with demand increasing in order from repetition, to reversal, to substitution, to destabilization (Mothersbaugh, Huhmann and Franke 2002). In a complex trope of destabilization, the advertisement means more than is said, and depends on the audience to come up with the intended message. One example of destabilization is irony. This takes advantage of opposition. Another mechanism by which framing strategies attempt to persuade is comparison, e.g. metaphor. To see examples of different rhetorical figures please see the coding instructions booklet used in the content analysis research (Appendix II).
4.2.1.3.1. Metaphor
Metaphor is an example of a destabilization trope which falls under the umbrella of analogical structures, and which makes use of cross-domain comparisons to alter consumer response (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Metaphors compare objects via analogy, by taking advantage of the conceptual similarity between two objects originating from different domains (Stern 1990, Ward &Gaidis 1990). Metaphors affirm a fundamental similarity between two objects which are not expected to be associated and in doing so open up new inferences (McQuarrie and Mick 1996). In order to resolve a metaphor consumers must draw on inferences that find similarities between the objects presented (McQuarrie, Edward and Phillips 2005). The purpose of metaphorical comparison is to aid viewer’s comprehension of
122
abstract and intangible concepts or objects through comparison to more familiar, concrete domains (Phillips and McQuarrie 2009). Gentner et al. (2001) suggest that because metaphors are processed without the underlying conceptual theme being considered, they have great potential to alter consumer belief systems. Through a metaphor the attributes of the target abstract characteristics, supporting the rationale for the use of metaphors: alluding to concrete and common domains can increase consumer comprehension of abstract, complex domains (Gibbs 1994). The idea that the positive impact of rhetorical figures on persuasion stems from their artful deviance which creates incongruity is not new (Berlyne 1971). If a metaphor is not deviant then it cannot be argued to have the same persuasive effects as other destabilization figures (Phillips and McQuarrie 2009). Given the common use of metaphors in everyday language (Gibbs 1994), it should be noted that in order for a metaphor to be considered a rhetorical device of destabilization, it should deviate from audience expectation to a similar extent as other destabilization figures.
Metaphors convey the main ad message (strong implicatures) and also render the viewer open to multiple, distinct inferences about the advertised service (weak implicatures) (Sperber and Wilson 1986; McQuarrie and Phillips 2005). This openness to both strong and weak implicatures renders metaphorical figures beneficial in terms of persuasion. As a complex rhetorical operation of destabilization, metaphor can also prompt consumer elaboration. In their research on rhetorical figures in advertising, McQuarrie and Mick (1999) illustrate the power of both metaphor and pun (rhetorical tropes) over rhetorical schemes in engendering positive ad attitude and more favorable than unfavorable elaboration. Phillips and McQuarrie’s (2009) recent research on the properties of metaphors which impact consumer comprehension find that the power of metaphors lies in the figurativeness or gradient of artful deviation, as opposed to the cross-domain comparison facilitated by metaphors. This supports the argument that it is the artful deviation and irregularity of a rhetorical figure, and not its assignment to a particular category (e.g. metaphor) that explains its distinctive impacts on consumer response to advertising (McQuarrie and Mick 1996). These results hold except for one distinct sub group of consumers with high Metaphor Processing Ability (Burroughs and
123
Mick 2004) who engaged in higher elaboration and whose beliefs were shifted after viewing both figurative and non-figurative metaphors (Phillips and McQuarrie 2009). This highlights the importance of taking consumer characteristics into account in research related to consumer response to advertising strategies (see also Section 2.4). The findings indicate that figurativeness is of higher importance than metaphorical cross-domain comparison in altering consumer response to advertising. This implies that it is not the individual properties of different rhetorical figures that are important, but how much they deviate from audience expectation and how artful that deviation is. Therefore all destabilization figures should have the same impact on elaboration provided they are constant in terms of figurativeness.
Gkiouzepas and Hogg’s (2011) research looks at the properties of metaphor more closely, and finds that ad visuals which synthesize, rather than juxtapose metaphorical objects are more effective, stimulate greater elaboration and engender more positive ad and brand attitudes. Further, they illustrate that synthesizing conceptually similar rather than very dissimilar metaphorical objects elicits more favorable consumer responses. This reinforces the importance of figurativeness – as synthesized objects are more figurative than juxtaposed ones – as well as the content of metaphorical comparison.
Metaphorical Tropes & Elaboration
Rhetorical figures are marked by artful deviance, and as such indicate to viewers to elaborate on the communicator’s intentions in so marking the text (McQuarrie, Edward and Mick 1999). The assumption of relevance (Sperber and Wilson 1986) states that; when presented with marked text, the audience always assumes relevance on the part of the communicator, therefore readers readily comprehend that the communicator has established artful deviation in order to convey a message. The artful deviance which marks the text is the fundamental property by which rhetorical figures evoke elaboration (McQuarrie, Edward, Mick 1999).
Artful deviation stimulates incongruity (Berlyne 1971), and it is the incongruity which provokes audience elaboration (Heckler and Childers 1992).There have been a number of studies examining the role of advertising incongruity on memory, judgments and attitudes (e.g. Edell and Staelin 1983; Sujan et al. 1986; Houston et al. 1987; Meyers-Levy &Tybout 1989), an important one of which distinguishes between two elements of incongruity;
relevancy and expectancy (Heckler and Childers 1992). Expectancy refers to the extent to which information fits into a predetermined pattern evoked by an ad, and relevancy refers to the extent that a piece of information relates to the identification of the principal message
124
expressed by the advertisement. Unexpected information is shown to provoke higher recall than expected information, and irrelevant information has been shown to evoke less recall than relevant information (Heckler and Childers 1992, Hwai, Lee and Mason 1999). This incongruity prompted by artful deviance is how rhetorical structures rise above the advertising clutter and grab viewer’s attention, engaging them to elaborate (Hwai, Lee and Mason 1999). Rhetorical figures evoke what Barthes (1985) coined a ‘pleasure of the text’, which refers to the positive emotions that arise from processing a clever, complex, or amusing arrangement of signs. This has been illustrated as far back as 1971; Berlyne’s empirical findings related to aesthetics show that incongruity can generate a pleasurable degree of arousal. The initial ambiguity present in the ad can be stimulating and the resolution which follows can create pleasure (McQuarrie and Mick 1992; Peracchio and Meyers-Levy 1994). In contrast to one-dimensional, simple texts, those which allow multiple interpretations are inherently pleasurable to viewers. For simple, closed texts, the viewer may extract pleasure from the information content, but the text itself does not offer a source of pleasure (McQuarrie, Edward, Mick 1999). The concept of pleasure of the text has been shown to be linked to ad attitudes (Mick 1992) and attitudes towards the product or service as the audience is likely to experience serendipitous emotions as a result of processing the ad (Meyers-Levy and Malaviya 1999).
Elaboration ‘reflects the extent to which information in working memory is integrated with prior knowledge structures’ (MacInnis and Price 1987:475), it refers to the amount and complexity of cognitive resources engaged by a stimulus (McQuarrie, Edward and Mick 1999). The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) (Petty and Cacioppo 1981) is one of two dual-process models which, alongside the heuristic-systematic model (HSM) (Chaiken 1980), has dominated persuasion research. The basic tenet of both the ELM and HSM is related to the amount of thought devoted to processing an advertising message. In conditions provoking high elaboration, central or systematic processing occurs. This involves the careful consideration of and critical attention paid to the arguments central to the message.
Alternatively, in low elaboration conditions, a peripheral or heuristic route is prompted, whereby shallow cues serve to persuade (Green and Brock 2000). Elaboration is argued to impact persuasion through logical consideration and evaluation of message assertions.
Elaboration involves a divergent focus, in that an individual engaged in elaboration processing might simultaneously access other schemas and experiences, including opinions, previous knowledge, and memories. This is in direct contrast to transportation, which entails
125
a convergent process, whereby all available cognitive capacities are focused on the events conveyed in the story or imagined in the mental simulation (Green and Brock 2000, Escalas 2004). Low and high levels of elaboration can be distinguished in terms of the response elicited, with the former evoking only a recognition response, and the latter constructing connection between encoded information and prior knowledge, involving the integration of data from multiple knowledge structures (MacInnis and Price 1987). In conditions of low elaboration, individuals will protect their cognitive resources and filter out advertisements believed to be irrelevant, or else devote available cognitive resources to another task, for example daydreaming (Petty and Cacioppo 1981). In low elaboration contexts argument or message claims are judged on the superficial analysis of positive or negative cues which aren’t necessarily intrinsically linked to the advertised object. For example, model attractiveness may be relevant for a beauty product but acts as a peripheral cue for unrelated objects (Gorn 1980, Cacioppo and Petty 1984). Another low elaboration attitude development strategy is to generate simple inferences based on various cues such as the number of arguments presented. In conditions of high elaboration readers are expected to: pay attention to the appeal; access relevant associations and experiences from existing schema; scrutinize and elaborate on the encoded message in light of the available associations; and extract inferences about the strength of the ad assertions to make a judgment based upon careful and weighted consideration (Cacioppo and Petty 1984). Cacioppo and Petty (1984) suggest that once developed, attitudes are relatively enduring because the associations on which they are based are central to the advertised object and due to cognitive activity relevant to the object, leading to an integration of the attitude into schema in memory. The researchers go on to suggest that the attitude is predictive of behavior because the ad viewer has already: related the incoming information to their prior experiences and knowledge increasing their confidence about their attitudes; developed a stable evaluation which is easily accessible when behavior is required; and debated the suitable actions in relation to the advertised object for a variety of settings relevant to the individual which reduces the necessity for individuals to re-evaluate their attitude when the costs of the relevant behavior emerge. Increased elaboration leads to persuasion, but once the level of elaboration surpasses a certain threshold it can act to the detriment of persuasion; an inverted U relationship between elaboration and persuasion is asserted in the literature (Kelly and Block 1997, Escalas 2004). Transportation is argued to have no such relationship (Green and Brock 2000), however additional research on the antecedents and consequences of different levels of transportation is necessary to understand this processing style further.
126
4.2.2. Service Characteristics
An in-depth literature review was conducted in order to select service type dichotomies which are relevant, interesting and warranting empirical investigation. Appendix IV offers a summary of the characteristics used to classify services. Alongside a literature review on methods of categorizing services, the literature on services advertising research was also explored. Two service typologies emerged as relevant in terms of (a) impacting consumer response (comprehension and attitudes) to the service, and (b) the ability of different framing strategies to impact how consumers respond to the different service types. Mental intangibility (high versus low) and customization (high versus low) are selected as the two typologies across which to investigate the effectiveness of framing strategies.
4.2.2.1. Mental Intangibility
Different framing strategies may be more or less effective in advertising goods and services.
One characteristic which is frequently cited as differentiating goods from services is intangibility. Intangible products are more problematic to appraise, which in turn affects uncertainty (Zeithaml and Bitner 2000). While there are few pure goods and services, most products have intangible or tangible dominant characteristics and can be placed closer to one or other extreme (Rust, Zahorik, and Keiningham 1996), and what defines an offering as a good or a service is the tangible or intangible essence of the market offering (Berry 1980). An abundance of research finds that intangibility is positively correlated with perceived risk (Finn, 1985, McDougall and Snetsinger 1990, Mitchell and Greatorex 1993, Murray and Schlacter 1990, Zeithaml and Bitner 2000). Perceived risk has been identified as an important factor which strongly influences consumer behavior: Consumers suffer anxiety comparing and selecting services they know little about (Mortimer 2000). Laroche et al. (2001) capture the complexity of intangibility by illustrating the three dimensions of the construct: physical intangibility (inaccessibility to the senses), generality (general/specific service perception) and mental intangibility (mental representation). The physical dimension of intangibility reflects the degree to which a good cannot be touched or seen, its inaccessibility to the senses, and its lack of physical presence (Laroche et al. 2004). It is closely aligned with McDougall’s (1987) definition of intangibility: ‘the lack of physical evidence’. The second dimension, generality, reflects the difficulty consumers experience in precisely defining a specific good
127
(Laroche et al. 2004). This follows Flipo’s (1988) assertion that tangibility is a synonym for precision. A good or service can be described as general when consumers are unable to precisely identify the attributes, features and/or benefits. Conversely, goods/services are perceived to be specific when they facilitate a number of clear-cut definitions, features and benefits in the consumers mind (Laroche, Bergeron and Goutaland 2001). Laroche et al.
(2004) offer the example of a car being ‘a complex vehicle that one uses to get from Point A to Point B’ as being general versus a car being ‘an intricate machine; made of aluminum alloy; powered by an internal-combustion engine; with numerous features such as antilock braking systems, dual-side air bags, immobilizer theft-deterrent devices, air conditioning, etc’
as being specific (p374). This study manipulates mental intangibility, rather than physical intangibility or generality. This is because recent research reveals that mental intangibility accounts for more variance in perceived risk than the other two intangibility dimensions (Laroche et al. 2004). The services in this study are by nature physically intangible, but generality is not manipulated in this research. A mentally intangible service lacks a clear mental representation; it is difficult to grasp, especially in cases where the evaluator lacks experience with the service (Finn 1985, McDougall and Snetsinger 1990).The services marketing literature argues for the importance of minimizing the level of intangibility associated with services (Parasuraman et al. 1988), the challenge facing marketers is to reduce the risk surrounding the purchase of products perceived to be mentally intangible, by making their offerings mentally, rather than physically tangible. Ease of imagination impacts affective and cognitive response to advertising stimuli. It entails the difficulty individuals are faced with when attempting to imagine using a service. When consumers are faced with services that are mentally intangible, they tend to lack prior experience with the service; they can experience difficulty envisioning themselves incorporating it into their daily routine.
Typically, ease of imagination is positively correlated to consumer evaluation of new products, and difficulty of imagination is negatively correlated to consumer evaluation of new products (Zhao, Hoeffler and Dahl 2012).
Advertising offers a powerful communications tool to mentally tangibilize services and increase the ease of imagination experienced by the audience. The impact of mental intangibility on the effectiveness of framing strategies is not well understood. One line of research recommends the use of association to make abstract concepts more concrete (Berry 1980, George and Berry 1981, Berry and Clark 1986). Metaphor, a rhetorical trope, is a framing strategy which facilitates association between two separate domains because alluding
128
to concrete domains can increase consumer comprehension of abstract, complex domains (Gibbs 1998). On the other hand dramatization (Legg and Baker 1987) and visualization (Miller and Foust 2003), which can be facilitated via narrative and mental simulation framing respectively, have also been recommended as effective strategies to reduce the intangibility
to concrete domains can increase consumer comprehension of abstract, complex domains (Gibbs 1998). On the other hand dramatization (Legg and Baker 1987) and visualization (Miller and Foust 2003), which can be facilitated via narrative and mental simulation framing respectively, have also been recommended as effective strategies to reduce the intangibility